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kleinbl00  ·  868 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: November 10, 2021

My wife went to the dentist last Friday. It was the first time in a couple years because she hates dentists. The dentist asked her to schedule her next appointment six months out and she absolutely vaporlocked over the idea of booking time six months out because she doesn't know the call schedule, she doesn't know who's going to be out, etc.

Now - my wife owns the business. Yes she delivers babies and maybe she'll be delivering a baby but she can absolutely tell the people whose paychecks she signs "I'm getting my teeth cleaned for two hours in May work around it." But ultimately, they've got family dying in Brazil, relationships coming apart at the seams, roommates with strokes in the hospital, dire shit that needs breathing room. All my plans got eaten today because one of our midwives is in Hawaii (which we knew nine months out) which means overflow from birth complications (which we knew yesterday) pushed four patients onto a day that my wife doesn't usually work so my Wednesday got ate.

    But such is life with alpinism/mountaineering/ski touring.

It's not.

Unless you have versatility baked into the gig, your spontaneity costs your co-workers. Period. if you reserve the right to fly off the handle on three days' notice, that means nobody else gets to fly off the handle. At all.

I have to book all vacations nine months in advance because our employees book theirs three months in advance and if the business crumbles our employees will be bummed? But not crippled. If I want to have drinks with a friend on a day other than one I already have cleared I need to know like a week out just to get childcare covered. And that's entirely so we can cover the eventuality of women having babies whenever they have babies.

We had an employee who couldn't tell us where she was gonna be more than three or four days out. We fired her. She fucked up other things? but the fact that she made the entire goddamn office hostage to her whims fucked up everything in her life. Her roommate is still in our employ and she's reverse-aged Benjamin Button style like six years since.

Sounds like you're telegraphing that you aren't going to be scheduled. Which feels like bohemianism to you and looks like unreliability to the people attempting to work around your schedule. Be very careful.